ABSTRACT
The philosophical study of laughing has a long history, including contributions from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Bergson. In trying to understand the meaning of human laughter, philosophers traditionally investigated the occasions that make us laugh: jokes, comedy, and humour, asking questions of when and why it is that we burst out into laughter. Everyone considered laughter to be a uniquely human capacity. “No other living things laugh,” as Aristotle puts it in Parts of Animals (673a9).
